Did I set any expectations (musical or poetic) with the first part of my planned multi-movement Halloween presentation of Conrad Aiken’s “The Vampire?” Well, this first: if you’re just coming onto this post someway, you’ll want to hear how Aiken and I tell this frightening tale in the proper order, so go ahead and leave this post and listen to the parts in order.
The opening had a small ensemble of mostly orchestral instruments, playing the simple parts in a mode that I sometimes use and call “punk orchestral.” In Aiken’s opening words we met a mysterious creature that interrupted the normal life of the poem’s world. We learned that the creature seems distressed. In the second movement today that distress is more widespread, as those in the poem’s world come under the thrall of the creature. Inescapable dark visions are rife. The creature is starting to speak, and what it says is the matter to be covered in the next section which I plan to release soon.
Text of the second section of Conrad Aiken’s The Vampire, performed today.
.
With the poem’s now revealed dread, the sweet violin from last time starts keening, and my black Telecaster electric guitar rasps chords thru a fuzz-box distortion. There are broad statements reporting cries and anguished words in Aiken’s text, and so a second electric guitar enters halfway in – an instrument which I aimed toward amp speakers for feedback in its part.* The cello has nothing to play in this section, but my most “rawk” electric bass takes over the low end.*
The gentle vocals in that first part might have benefited if I had a trained and sweet voiced singer instead of myself. Today’s vocals? Well, I like shouting and ranting, but I’m no Ozzy Osbourne either. I did my best. Only after I completed the mix for today’s section did I think that that fuzzy Telecaster part I played was more akin to Norman Greenbaum’s immortal “Spirit in the Sky” than sinister dark metal.
OK, if you’ve done your part and listened to Part 1 first, you can now listen to Part 2 with the audio player gadget below. Do your “Fixed and burning eyes” not see any such player? It’s not the end of the world, you can use this highlighted link which will open a new browser tab with just an audio player.
.
*It’s a recent Squier Rascal short-scale solid-body electric bass with pair of thick voiced humbucker pickups. I bought it earlier this year to replace a similar sized and equipped bass that I traded Dean Seal for decades ago. The pickup switches and finally the volume pot on the older instrument used since the early days of the LYL Band 40 some years ago have given up the ghost.
**I’ve sought a somewhat controllable version of that sound from the first time I plugged a cheap, used, thin brown hollow-body guitar into my phonograph amplifier and received an unholy wail of distortion sliced open by the squeal of feedback. Maybe part of the fascination is that “somewhat controllable” aspect of using such sounds in a musical piece, that mixture of challenge and chance. The sound also annoys people, which can be good or bad, depending on my mood.
